Compensatory education is provided to help disadvantaged students to overcome any cognitive and social deficits due to their environment. This is acheived by offering supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational archievement reach their full potential[1][2]

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Children growing up poor have lower academic outcomes than their well-off peers. They are more likely to experience learning
disabilities and developmental delays.[3] Poor children score between 6 and 13 points lower on various standardized tests of IQ, verbal ability, and achievement.[4]Poverty also has a negative impact on high-school graduation[5] and college attendance.[6]
Children raised by a single parent, children who have more than two siblings, children by teenaged parents and children raised in ghetto neighbourhoods are also at risk of low academical achievement.[7]

Numerous programs have been created in order to help children and youth at risk reach their full potential. Among the American programs of compensary education are Head Start, the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program, High/Scope, Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, SMART (Start Making a Reader Today), the Milwaukee Project and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. In Germany and Great Britain Early Excellence Centres are widely discussed programs of compensatory education. Not all of that programs have been proven to be effective. However scientist were able to identify social programms that work.[8]Among these are the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project[9][10][11], the Abecedarian Project[12][13][14][15][16] and SMART[17][18]

↑Baker, Scott, Russell Gersten and Thomas Keating. When less may be more: A 2-year longitudinal evaluation of a volunteer tutoring program requiring minimal training. Reading Research Quarterly, Volume 35, Number 4; Oct-Dec. 2000.

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